The Economics and Politics of Chaos - By Paul Krugman

[DonViejo]

October 1, 2013, 9:27 am



The best commentary I’ve seen on what just happened is visual, and can be seen here. Unfortunately, I don’t think I should put that image on a Times web site.

But how did we get here? Interestingly, Ezra Klein implicitly offers two quite different interpretations.

First, he describes very well what the policy issue, such as it is, amounts to:

This is all about stopping a law that increases taxes on rich people and reduces subsidies to private insurers in Medicare in order to help low-income Americans buy health insurance. That’s it. That’s why the Republican Party might shut down the government and default on the debt.

Indeed. There’s a definite class-war aspect to this fight, pitting the interests of the 0.1 percent against those of lower-income families. But at this point the 0.1 percent, by and large, are pleading with the GOP to knock it off. So while class war may have been where this started, the monster has long since escaped from its cage; even Karl Rove, more or less the designated defender of upper-class privileges, is whining that the party won’t listen to him.

full article:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/the-economics-and-politics-of-chaos/?_r=0